Debated with a normie friend. It's sad how misguided they can be. He's fallen into the same trap set by the media, in which all crypto is a scam, and by association so too #Bitcoin

But in this instance, we were discussing how things cost more today and why. He claimed things cost more today, then for example in the 70s, not because of enshitification through "planned obsolescence" or greed, but due to increased technological innovations and lack of a labor force. I replied with the following:

"You'll want to read up on the debasement of currency and how that has had direct implications associated with more dollars per item as a result.

The book outlined in this link is a great read and this article briefly describes the history of it, at least in the context of the US, but such debasement isn't limited to only one country. We've seen it in almost all (remember the trillion dollar note that Zimbabwe once had?). Things didn't cost more in Zimbabwe, as a rudimentary example, because of advancement in technology, labor, etc. Things cost more in that poor country because of continual lowering of purchasing power.